This specification aims to allow web applications to connect with and communicate to each other over local-area transport protocols. In particular, this specification aims to bring the web’s client/server application model to inter-device communication. The web’s application architecture enables an application running on a server to dynamically and incrementally send application state and logic to an intermittently connected client. This model enables a powerful multi-homed application architecture.

For roughly the past decade, Debian has shipped the Mozilla desktop applications (Firefox, Thunderbird, and Seamonkey) in a rebranded form that replaces the original, trademarked names and logos with alternatives (Iceweasel, Icedove, and Iceape). Originally, this effort was undertaken to work around incompatibilities between the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), the Mozilla trademark-usage policy, and the licenses of the Mozilla logos. But times—and policy wordings—change, and Debian now seems poised to resume calling its packages by the original, upstream Mozilla names.(Source: lwn.net)

So it seems that the iceweasel package some of you know and love may be gone in the future.

Firefox 3 is making a lot of progress and there is even some research going on in the field of memory usage.

As the web and web browsers have matured, people have started expecting different things out of them. When we first released Firefox, few people were browsing with tabs or add-ons. I’ve written before about how web usage patterns have changed, so too have our strategies on how to effectively make use of system resources such as memory.

Topics that are discussed in some details are

Reduced Memory fragmentation

Fixed cycles with the Cycle collector

Tuned our caches

Adjusted how we store image data

Hunted down leaks

Measuring Memory Use

Ways to test

A really good read to get an overview of what is done to make firefox 3 better…Source:Lwn.net

I can see the points and agree with them.. mozilla has to rethink their financial model… Being so much dependent from google is not a good thing.
But you have to stay in perspective… at least it’s free and open software. So there are less danger to loose the application at a whole or to get nasty surprises while using it (LESS not NONE).